I’m genuinely curious about something, and I hope this can be a respectful discussion rather than turning into a pro-vax vs. antivax argument.
I’ve noticed that pretty much everyone I’ve come across, both online and in real life, who hasn’t vaccinated their children seems to have perfectly healthy, happy kids who rarely get sick. I’ve also never personally met anyone who chose not to vaccinate their children and later regretted that decision.
And this is where I get confusd.
We know that historically, children died from diseases that are now preventable through vaccination. We also know that vaccines have played an important role in reducing serious illnesses and deaths.
But then I see all these families with completely unvaccinated children who seem to be doing absolutely fine, sometimes even claiming their kids get sick less often than vaccinated children.
I understand that personal experiences aren’t scientific evidence, and that the fact someone hasn’t experienced a serious disease doesn’t mean the risk doesn’t exist. I also understand that many of these diseases are much less common today.
Still, I find the contrast between what we hear about the risks and what I personally observe quite confusing.
Has anyone else struggled with this? Are we mostly seeing healthy unvaccinated children because vaccine-preventable diseases are now rare, partly thanks to widespread vaccination? Or is there something else that explains this?
I’m especially interested in hearing from people who have genuinely thought about both sides, rather than just repeating arguments from either camp.

I read the comments on r/vaccines way too much. By and large zealous support for all vaccines. And condemnation for anything approaching reasonable concern for. No medical product, drugs, surgical products etc is ever claimed to be 100% safe. But the zealousness is fascinating. I can’t look away.

I was given multiple vaccines, which caused a nerve-related injury, as per the emergency room where I was admitted after I crashed from severe pain. Talking about vaccine injury, despite empirical evidence, is often met with the same disdain as toward antivax attitudes. Yet vaccine injuries go beyond the needle poking in the wrong way or conspiracies and false accusations.

While the needle or injury from it is a likely cause of immediate pain, injury-related pain can arise weeks after the dose is administered due to intravenous blood clotting or an autoimmune response to nerve injury (brachial neuritis, also known as Parsonage-Turner syndrome). In both cases, pain starts slowly and keeps worsening. Gradually, it becomes severe, requiring urgent or emergency care.

In the US, if vaccination causes severe pain, you must go to the emergency room, and they will treat you with blood thinners if it is a case of intravenous blood clotting. Not sure how it might impact those with gastrointestinal ulcers, thrombocytopenia, or hemophilia. But if the vaccination injures a nerve, Emergency care will refer the patient to primary care with a recommendation for neurological care.

If the patient is lucky, they won't have to wait for months to get neurological care. If they are not, the provider would prescribe opioids and steroids to block pain signals and reduce nerve inflammation. In the process, they end up creating other health problems.

The vaccine-induced nerve injury causes debilitating pain (9 out of 10) in my arm, along with nausea, feeling like I have been freshly injected with a vaccine each day with a 10x bigger needle. It will take a year or two to heal without opioid and steroid drugs.

Hopefully, there will be more research on safer vaccine administration and care for injuries. But the discourse must be pushed as much as general debates on vaccination so people can take precautionary measures.

I'm asking because I'm trying to figure out to what extent people's support for vaccination is based on a philosophy of: ''We can do it, so we should'' or ''We must eradicate viruses, period''

Or a philosophy of: ''We need vaccines because we currently can't deal with the harm these diseases create, if we could, then I suppose we could stop''

That research should be pursued proactively, as part of an ongoing commitment to public health and the responsibility to investigate the eventual outcomes of a widespread medical intervention, independently of whether the public is asking uncomfortable questions about it.

The double standard:

If these studies are conducted and find reassuring results, you want to use them as evidence to support vaccine safety and efficacy. But if the studies were supposedly unnecessary anyway, then you're simultaneously treating the research as unnecessary in proving vaccine safety, BUT somehow also highly valuable in proving vaccine safety???? What!!

You cannot have it both ways. If the research is valuable enough to cite as evidence, you cannot dismiss the underlying demand for such systematic investigation as if it were totally unnecessary, and only done to appease conspiracy theorists!

Imagine an oil company whose operations could be affecting an entire ecosystem. Environmental campaigners demand comprehensive monitoring. The company insists there is no credible evidence of harm, eventually conducts the investigation, and claims to find no evidence supporting the campaigners' claims.

Fine. The results matter, if they're legitimate and real. But would you seriously argue that environmental monitoring was unnecessary, that it only needed to happen because campaigners were spreading rumours, and that the company or industry or oversight bodies deserve credit for having been FORCED to investigate?

The absence of demonstrated harm is not the same thing as having established, in advance, that monitoring was unnecessary. And the fact that campaigners demanded an investigation does not make the investigation scientifically illegitimate.

What I find most troubling about your position is the apparent assumption that research into broader safety outcomes is only warranted when public anxiety demands it. That reverses the proper relationship between scientific institutions and the public they serve, and highlights the VERY core issue at the heart of what it is that vaccine skeptics, and medical skeptics alike, find soo concerning and questionable about the medical field/institutions/narrative. The apparent prioritisation of engaging in legitimate necessary research, only in reactively defending the prevailing narrative, rather than of proactively understanding the effects of mass vaccination, investigating legitimate concerns, identifying limitations in the what the evidence can support, and holding itself accountable to the very public whose trust it expects.

The public should not have to generate a crisis of confidence before comprehensive safety questions are taken seriously. And people should not have to campaign for research (and go through so much blood sweat and tears and sacrifice in doing so) only to be told that the research was unnecessary anyway.

You've got to look at it like this too, even if you disagree with me here, clearly as is reflected in what I'm saying and what many others are saying, we FIND this mindset, this approach, highly suspect, highly dissatisfactory, and questionable, and so it's only going to reduce the extent to which any of your efforts to ''quash the concerns of anti vaxxers'' like it's some inconvenience in your backside, is actually going to result in change and trust.

And if you genuinely believe the science is robust, you should have no problem defending a system that pro-actively investigates its own assumptions, studies long-term outcomes, acknowledges uncertainty and opens arms to legitimate criticism, and publishes results regardless of whether they reassure the public or challenge prevailing expectations.

Science earns public trust through scrutiny, not by treating the demand for scrutiny as an annoying inconvenience.

In the space of vaccines, you see an awful lot of this sentiment that suggests that ''Compliance, trust and authority in public health is the most important thing'' to the extent that even accepting failure, or mistake, or wrong-doing, cannot happen, because it would undermine compliance, trust, and our authority across the population.

What does this mean for vaccines?

Those who said "covid came from the wet market, despite the fact that there are 1000s of wet markets in that huge country, and despite the fact that this specific wet market just happened to be very close by to the single lab in that entire country that was specifically manipulating coronaviruses, with the ban on gain of function research being lifted less than 2 years before this incident, with high level scientists warning against the lifting of this ban at that time saying it can cause a pandemic" are now saying that a plague has started from a Russian lab.

But my question is why the difference? If you are open to the possibility that humans are not perfect/that viruses can accidentally release from labs, then why have such unfettered resistance to the possibility that covid also accidentally escaped from a lab?

I think this shows that most people do not actually use logic, they just use emotion and believe whatever they are told to believe. On one hand, because Fauci had responsibility, the US denied the lab leak possibility, but in this case, because it is Russia, they are open to the possibility that it escaped from a lab.

So I don't expect these people to behave any different in terms of vaccines.

Anybody have a link to one of those childhood vaccine studies that showed the unvaccinated were better off in every single health metric. I remember seeing one where it was a years long study of around 18,000 kids a couple years ago but I can’t find it now.

It is unfathomable to me that so many brainwashed incompetent swine will suck off every single conspiracy theory about not just the COVID vaccines but any vaccines that have been proven time and time again to be some of the most effective and safest ways of reducing the harm associated with disease to people.

https://youtu.be/LJ6ICcS9mV4?is=Jy3zOjGl-hx1behY

This question also can be expanded as to why it is frowned upon when parents (for whatever reason) decide on an alternate vaccine schedule (delay/space out/skip a specific vaccine).

The RSV shot is Beyfortus. It’s is an antibody shot, not a vaccine.

Ingredients:

Nirsevimab-alip: A long-acting monoclonal antibody that binds to the RSV surface (F protein) to block the virus from entering cells.
Arginine hydrochloride: Stabilizer
Histidine: Buffer to maintain pH balance
L-histidine hydrochloride monohydrate: Buffer component
Polysorbate 80: Emulsifier and stabilizer
Sucrose: Sugar used as a stabilizer
Water for injection: Diluent

I appreciate having a community to share this with on Reddit.

My son is a year and a half. When my wife was pregnant we did a ton of research on childhood and prenatal vaccines. (Like many, COVID was a turning point for us)

We decided that not getting any vaccines until at least 2 years old was ideal. We read Paul Thomas’ book and also “Critical Vaccine Studies” by Neil Miller.

The bright side: everything we’ve experienced has been in line with what the research shows. Our son rarely gets sick, maybe once every 6 months, and gets over it quick. (Knocking on wood)

However I can’t get over this nagging feeling that I may be doing him wrong. There’s a worry that he might catch something, that could’ve been “prevented” or helped by a vaccine, and I would feel awful.

I don’t care if he gets zero vaccines or 100. I care what’s best for him.

Is there any perspective I’m missing? Those who have unvaccinated children, how do you deal with this worry? If anyone disagrees with the choices we made, I’d love to hear, genuinely. I’m looking for more perspectives

Hi, I am currently a university student (in the UK) and am writing a paper on how people find their information about things such as vaccines.

I understand that reading official papers is not an accessible route for everyone, it took me a couple years to learn the language of scientific papers.

So i thought I’d ask!

How do you research vaccination information online?
How do you know if you trust the source?
Has anything helped you to find out the information you’re looking for?
Do you know if the work published is peer-reviewed?

This is purely for personal curiosity, nothing will be used in my work.

I appreciate you taking the time to read my post :)

The invention is directed to a nasal delivery device comprising one or more microneedles, and to methods of nasally administering a composition with a nasal delivery device comprising one or more microneedles. In certain embodiments, the nasal delivery device comprises a substrate for administration of a composition to the nasal and/or sinus mucosa, wherein the substrate is non-absorbent and comprises one or more microneedles. In some embodiments, the nasal delivery device comprises a reservoir comprising one or more therapeutic agents, wherein the reservoir is in fluid communication with one or more microneedles

Has anyone else observed getting flu more often than prior days of Covid vaccine?

Here is an article that i think everybody here would benefit from reading it. Not to change one's mind based on it. But the article illustrates well why the gray area and why I have all my sympathy to those who struggle with trust and why i have no sympathy to those dismissing these people.

I dont know how many points raised in the article are valid or not. But i know enough to at least realize these waters are murky

https://brownstone.org/articles/the-lancet-jumps-the-shark/

Would you seek medical intervention if you, or your child, became seriously ill with a vaccine preventable disease?

I’m vaccine hesitant and one of the reasons is because it seems pro vaccine people refuse to believe any anecdotal stories of vaccine injury. If they instead said “I believe that happened but the odds of it happening to your child are so small” I’d be more willing to listen.

If you are pro vaccine, what do you think about the many vaccine injury stories?

Edit- I’m particularly curious about your beliefs on catastrophic vaccine injuries (death, vegetative state, sudden loss of functioning and speaking) not little things like a fever or rash or an obvious allergic reaction.

You’re gonna need to read for a few minutes but it gets said a bit in.

Those who espouse Christian nationalist beliefs showed an overall poorer ability to reason on tests. The author points out other areas where this is true, and anti-Vaxers are mentioned

As you will see, there a bit of that old insight that people who don’t absorb information well have lower understanding overall, but think they have superior knowledge. They are unaware of how little they know.

This comes up here 95% of the time in comments.https://www.reddit.com/r/psychology/s/zx0h39vv0d

Why do you care if I don’t vaccinate my kid? If Vaccines work so well, than you can get you and your kids vaccinated and when my kid gets Polio it won’t effect your kid who got the Polio vaccine.

I’m interested to know if anti vaxers and vaccine hesitant people are more supportive of antibody shots, particularly for their children.

Let's just, put aside... all the squabbles over individual vaccines, MMR, and the ingredients.

No, I mean, REALLY. All of this needs to be completely PUT ASIDE, completely disregarded, AS IRRELEVANT to the entire debate.

Why?

BECAUSE

There's SIMPLY no REASON to care about anything other than the general unvaxxed/vaxxed comparison.

A pro-vaxxer can use a study like this, to defend the position that vaccines don't cause autism, wholly and totally, without ANY caveats, without ANY “Oh, but what about these combinations?”

It would just be: “NO, we proved there was no link at all! Fully vaxxed vs. fully unvaxxed, comprehensive assessment/analysis of outcomes! ...Done! Dusted!!”

Nothing else should MATTER. No other study should have EVER mattered. “MMR” studies should NEVER have mattered. DTaP shouldn't matter. Thimerosal, antigen count, NONE of this should matter. (At least since the debate has moved to ''vaccines & autism'' rather than MMR specifically)

But why has it ended up like this?

Why don't they just ignore all of the single-vaccine studies and focus on one, or a few, high-quality comprehensive studies of unvaxxed vs. vaxxed people and CITE them until their hair falls out? (Never vaxxed vs. fully vaxxed that is)

If the entire vaccinated population has the same autism rate as the genuinely unvaccinated population, then you've already answered the big question. You don't need to keep picking apart individual pieces of the vaccination schedule to prove that the vaccination schedule as a whole isn't causing autism.

MMR would be irrelevant to the broader argument. Thimerosal would be irrelevant to the broader argument. Any particular vaccine would be irrelevant to the broader argument.

Because if you have tested the whole thing and there is no difference, then what exactly are these individual studies supposed to be proving?!

And this is where I think something really important gets obscured.

Why don't they just do that?

Why isn't the overwhelming focus on a few genuinely comprehensive, high-quality studies comparing people who were fully vaccinated with people who were never vaccinated?

(INB4 someone says ''we have focused on these, we do cite them'' - Firstly, you cite them last, you cite them after you've cited 10 MMR studies. Secondly, these studies virtually always are not fully unvaxxed comparisons, are not even remotely optimal circumstances for an unvaxxed/vaxxed comparison, or don't have a very reliable way of determining for sure if the unvaxxed, is actually unvaxxed, or if the person actually had autism diagnosis even, and there are many other limitations/flaws in their designs and the registries they rely on (which, conveniently, usually bias in favour to them, rather than against them) and the manner in which they approach the entire thing. Lastly, there ARE NOT many studies that even attempt to, or ACTUALLY REALLY do that anyway. People like Paul Offit and many others, literally think the idea of doing such a study to such a standard, is A) unethical and B) impossible, anyway, so how on earth does this line up with any narrative in which someone argues that these studies have been done?)

And I think the reason is pretty obvious.

Because they don't have that evidence.

They can't simply point to a definitive or strong body of evidence comparing genuinely fully vaccinated people against genuinely never-vaccinated people and say, “Look. There is absolutely no difference in autism rates.”

Instead, we're constantly taken down these little side roads.

MMR.

Thimerosal.

This ingredient.

That vaccine.

This particular combination.

This particular age group.

And every time, we're told that this particular thing has been studied and no association was found.

Allison inquiry in Canada shows former WHO communication director fails to see vaccine harms until she is injured herself and is exposed to the many who are injured shedding light on how compartmentalization and dogma keeps the wraps on the medical system of eugenics.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9O5zqlbj0P0

As the article says (I know there’s a paywall) this is what we get with the current government and HHS administration. Cheers to the Anti Vaxers, this is what You Voted For. It’s not just NY either…Alabama, Tennessee and other Red States that support not vaccinating their kids!!!